It was less than one hour to Iftar on the first day of Ramadan, when Hassan, an engineer, was still on duty in the control room of the electrical distribution network in a city in the Upper Egyptian Assiut governorate.
Having been in this job for a few years already, Hassan had got used to the idea of having a couple of sandwiches with a cup of tea for his first Ramadan Iftar and away from the family gathering where festive dishes were served.
Hassan had also got used to the fact that when it is about time to have Iftar, emergencies can occur. He was looking out of the window of his office to get a sense of Ramadan by watching young men distributing water and dried dates to those still far from their homes and people rushing towards their houses to be at the Iftar table for the 5:45 pm breaking of the fast, when the telephone rang announcing a major problem with the electricity service in two adjacent blocks of the city.
“Service drops before Iftar are always annoying for people preparing their Iftar meals, and when it is the first day of Ramadan, a very important day for many people, it becomes a much bigger problem,” Hassan said.
Once the notification was received, he had to call out the emergency team promptly to fix the problem. “It is hard for me to interrupt a moment when these workers would have loved to be at their houses with their families,” he said, “but they had to start getting on the road to manage the problem.”
By the time Hassan had reached out to the team and got them on the road to their destination, it was already time for Iftar. Sitting down to listen to the call to prayer on the radio and unwrap his sandwiches, Hassan was looking out of the window at the workers as they tried to get some dates for the road, now that they had no chance to eat the Iftar their families were cooking.
“By the time they got to their destination, I had received several phone calls reporting the ongoing problem, and when they arrived, I realised it was really complicated and that it would take hours to be fixed,” he said.
The workers had no time to eat anything, and they continued to work until 4:30 am when they had to stop to get something to eat and drink for Sohour before the dawn call to prayer at 5:02 am.
All the while, Hassan was receiving complaints from the residents of the apartment blocks who had to have their first Iftar and Sohour in the dark. The workers needed a few more hours for the problem to be fixed. “Their shift should have ended at 7 am, but they had to work beyond this before they would go home for a few hours of rest and get back to the distribution station, possibly to finish cooking,” he said.
For Ashraf, an A&E physician, missing an Iftar at home with the family for a shift at the hospital is the least of the many unpleasant experiences he has had during his 15 years of medical practice. Working at one of Cairo’s bigger private hospitals, his department has never had a quiet day, especially during Ramadan.
“Ramadan is the month when we have to deal with some really harsh problems, the worst of which are injuries, sometimes really bad injuries, from car accidents as people sometimes drive too fast to make it to their Iftar table on time,” he said.
“Luckily, this has not happened yet this Ramadan because many people took the first day off, and the second and third day were the weekend,” he added.
RAMADAN CODES: In Egypt, Ramadan started on 19 February, and days earlier the markets were packed with shoppers buying a wide range of foodstuffs.
On Thursday morning, the crowds were gathered around the kunafa and qatayef stalls selling these traditional cakes and patisseries. By the time for Iftar, the streets were slowly becoming more serene, as people were gathering for their first Iftars, large or small depending on economic means.
Researchers who have studied the norms of Egyptian eating during the holy Muslim month agree that large gatherings and family Iftars are core to social practices.
“For Egyptians, a big Ramadan Iftar is essential, especially during the first week,” said Nahla Emam, a professor of customs, beliefs, and folk knowledge at the Higher Institute of Folk Arts in Cairo.
She referenced the proverb that says that “in Egypt, Ramadan is about 10 days of cooking, 10 days of preparing new clothes for the Eid after Ramadan, and 10 days to prepare kahk [traditional sugar-coated biscuits] for the Eid.”
However, she added that the idea is that families come together for Iftar, and not just nuclear families but also extended ones as well. “With the new lifestyles where regular family lunches have largely been dropped, Ramadan has become quality time for family bonding. It may be the only month of the year when people meet with cousins and friends for a large and extended meal,” Emam added.
“In Egypt celebrating Ramadan is about sharing. People come together to eat and to put up Ramadan decorations in the streets and neighbourhoods and in their houses,” she said.
Food-sharing is an established element of Egyptian culture, according to Kotoz Tagueddine, a historian of Arab culture. He explained that this has been the case at least since the Arab conquest of Egypt in the seventh century CE, given the fact that Fustat, the first Arab-Muslim capital of Egypt, and the subsequent capitals that led up to the establishment of Cairo, were all designed in a way that assembled groups of people of shared backgrounds or professions in close proximity.
He added that food-sharing is also about the exercise of social solidarity and the show of social and financial affluence, as demonstrated in today’s large Ramadan Iftars where food is offered abundantly to an entire village or neighbourhood.
Food-sharing is also essential in Islam as an act of togetherness and empathy with the lonely and the poor. It is considered blameworthy in Islam to enjoy food when neighbours or relatives are left without the means to put food on the table. There are also several Quranic verses that instruct that food be provided for travelers and the lonely and needy, especially those who are kin.
“This is why the Egyptian Food Bank has a Ramadan distribution scheme that provides Iftars for those who are on the road when it is time to break the fast at sunset,” said Abdel-Rahman Noureddin of the Egyptian Food Bank, one of the largest charities in the country that cater for nutrition.
Its scheme includes providing boxes containing quick meals in train and underground stations and on highways and on setting up charity Iftar tables across the country. “The idea is not necessarily about those who cannot afford to buy food but about those who cannot access it,” Noureddin said.
MISSED REJOICING: Sabri, a Cairo microbus driver for the last 30 years, said he cannot remember a Ramadan when he managed to be at home for Iftar except for a few days, no matter the direction he drives in and whether or not it is close to his home.
“The rush hour in Ramadan is exactly before Iftar, and this is when the road gets really crowded. This means that it is very hard for drivers, especially for someone like myself who does not own his microbus, to make it to Iftar with the family,” he added.
More often than not, Sabri said his Iftar starts on the road with some dates and juice being distributed by volunteers. The moment of rejoicing, he added, is always when he gets home to find that his wife, daughters, and grandchildren are waiting for him to have his Iftar, even if this has to be one or two hours after sunset.
Mohamed, a plumber who works in New Cairo, often finds himself stuck in traffic in a micro-bus when the time for Iftar comes while he is trying to get back to his house in Dar Al-Salam. The trip from east to south Cairo can be very smooth, and it can be very slow. However, he said, “no matter what I wait to go home to have Iftar. The only thing I have before I get home is some water. Ramadan Iftar is not about food; it is about being with my family; this is the true joy,” he said.
For over 20 years, Hamed has been a truck driver. His work is decided by the timing of the shipments he has to deliver, often enough fruit and vegetables, from one governorate to another. “Factoring in the Ramadan schedule is far too difficult. When a shipment is due for delivery, it has to go out on time, and this could well mean that I miss the first Ramadan Iftar with my family as happened this year,” he said.
Hamed was driving from Qena to Alexandria on 19 February, and he was about two hours away from Alexandria where he lives when the call for Maghrib prayers was heard. He stopped the truck for a few minutes, drank some water, and picked up his mobile phone to call his family “to share the moment with them,” he said.
Mohamed Husseini, the manager of a car service company in Mansoura, said that he makes sure to provide the drivers who take people from this Delta city to other cities around the country or Cairo Airport with either Iftar boxes or coupons to access Iftars from certain restaurants.
“If the driver is done taking the client to his destination, then he can go to pick up a hot meal from one of the designated restaurants. Otherwise, he has to have a juice and a sandwich,” Husseini said.
IFTAR DELIVERED: For five years, Hadi has been working with the delivery service of a branch of a fast-food chain. It was the only job he could find after graduating from the Faculty of Commerce at Cairo University.
“It’s better than being unemployed, especially since I am responsible for putting food on the table for my family after my father passed away when I was still a university student,” he said.
With fast-food not being popular for Ramadan Iftars, Hadi and the rest of the delivery team are not stressed out before the second week of Ramadan, when people start to order out. “Then it gets tough and complicated, and having Iftar on time or even a little later gets very unlikely,” he said.
Last Ramadan, Hadi had to spend three hours driving his motorcycle around New Cairo, first taking an order from the restaurant and then going to a compound in the First Settlement where he had to wait at the gate for 20 minutes while the security guard tried to contact the resident who had made the order to allow Hadi in.
Eventually, he arrived at a very angry client who was upset at receiving his meal 10 minutes after Iftar. Things got worse when he realised that it was the wrong order, “and he started yelling and swearing,” Hadi said. He had to call the restaurant to get the right order sent out before he moved on to the supposedly right address with the other order. He arrived there over 90 minutes after Iftar with cold burgers and fries and got yelled at one more time.
“In Ramadan things are always very tight, and we sometimes get things mixed up. It is my job, and I don’t have a choice,” he said.
It was this kind of incident that made Mohamedein leave his job with the delivery service of a patisserie chain. “It was always very stressful, and things got mixed up. A delivery service is always very difficult because the restaurant sends us out with at least five orders when each client expect us to be coming out straight away and only with his order,” he said.
After seven tough years, Mohamedein finally found another job on a farm in the Delta. “It means that I can only have Iftar with my family one day a week, but this was exactly the case when I was with the delivery service — which was much more stressful and at times humiliating,” he said.
Morgan, a fisherman in Matrouh on the North Coast, cannot hope for even one day a week to be at the Iftar table of his family. “There are just a few days that could be at the beginning, the middle, or the end of Ramadan, depending on the fishing trip I am doing,” he said. This year, Morgan is spending just the first four days of Ramadan with his family, and he is getting ready to “leave for the sea on the fifth day for 20 days,” he said.
He is hoping to come back for Lailat Al-Qadr, the holiest night of Ramadan that roughly falls on the 27th of the month. “When I come back, I will have enough money for the things that the house needs for the Eid,” he said.
According to Ahmed Nasser, head of the Fishermen’s Syndicate, fishing in the Mediterranean and Red Sea typically goes on for two to three weeks.
“This is the duration of a trip on the big fishing ships,” he explained. He added that fishermen who work on smaller ships that do not go as far out to sea need to set out before sunset, because the best time for fishing is from sunset to dawn.
“It is different for those who fish in the Nile or the lakes, but for the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, it has to be in the late evening or before dawn,” he explained. “If a fisherman misses more than two days at sea then that comes off his income. Most miss one or two days maximum during the entire month. They have to go to sea to put food on the table for their families.”
* A version of this article appears in print in the 26 February, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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